Greatness can come in small packages.

I’m a member of the Casual Games Association which helps me stay up with the industry for our casual games for health site Playnormous. I get a magazine from them four times a year, and sometimes I run across an amazing article that must be shared. This quarter, “What Makes a Great Game Great” by Vinny Carrella and Kevin Richardson. This article refers to mainstream casual games, but maybe this could be applied to health games as well. Maybe these tenets should be applied to health games.

Nothing short of magical.

The first thing a great game needs is magic. This is what reels the player in…and what keeps them coming back for more. It’s a feeling of leaving the anxieties of the world behind you and emerging yourself in a new time and place; achieving that feeling of “flow” (as the Theory of Flow’s originator Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would say). It’s joy, it’s mojo, it’s just plain magic.

I would say that Great Game Tenet #1 is the biggest struggle health game developers face when asked to take relatively unexciting content and make it into something people want to play. It’s much easier to take a compelling story, like a forbidden romance during World War II or a magical land where you must kill the monster to save the princess, to achieve a feeling of Flow. But what about for health games? How does one make a health game magical?  Here are my first thoughts:

• Put fun first.
• Add a compelling storyline.
• Challenge the player.
• Meet the player’s skill level.
• Give the player variety.

Health games that do it well.

There are a couple of health games that I think have that magical touch.  Not surprisingly, these are a few of the more “successful” health games and are often mentioned in national press whenever a story on serious games is written.  The first, Dance Dance Revolution by Konami.  This is one of the first widely used physical games and requires the player to tap on pads to a particular beat.  The user gets the sensation of dancing at a club while performing a physical dance-like activity.  First an arcade sensation, now available at home on multiple platforms including Wii and Xbox.  Why is it so successful?  DDR puts fun first, concentration and focus are required for success, and each play offers a different experience.

However, one could argue that DDR isn’t a health game at all since it wasn’t originally created to make players healthier.  So, I submit to you, are there any other health games you can think of that have that coveted touch of magic?

Recommended readings.

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975)  Beyond Boredom and Anxiety
• Koster, R. (2004) A Theory of Fun for Game Design